From PRI, Public Radio International and KCRW Santa Monica, this is To the Point.

Barack Obama, shareholder in chief.

Hello again, I'm Warren Olney, and this is To the Point from Public Radio International.

A daily look at the issues Americans care about most.

Big chunks of America's biggest banks are now owned by the taxpayers, and with billions more bailout money to come, they're going to own more. The Obama administration is faced with a major question. With federal ownership on the increase, should there be more federal control? The president says he won't subsidize failure by allowing bailout money to

pay for executive bonuses. Does he need to do more? Should he nationalize the banks and dismiss the

architects of failure? Buy up those toxic assets. Cut the size of banks so they're not too big to

fail. On To the Point, what's the best way to get the biggest bang from the next bailout?

First, here's the news. Support for To the Point comes from subscribers of KCRW Santa Monica and from

the Public Radio International Program Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation and the John

D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation. Hello again, Mormon-Aulney, back with To the Point.

After the stimulus bill, the president's next economic challenge will be another massive bailout.

Today, we'll talk about how much federal control should come with increased federal ownership of America's major financial institutions.

First, this news update last week, there were 626,000 new claims for unemployment benefits,

30,000 more than the week before, enough to create a new sense of urgency for the president's stimulus package.

At the energy department, he made the case for quick action.

So I'm calling on all the members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate to rise to this moment.

No plan's perfect. There have been constructive changes made to this one over the last several

weeks. I would love to see additional improvements today. But the scale and the scope of this

plan is the right one. David Lightman, his White House correspondent for the McClatchy newspapers. He's on a cell phone on Capitol Hill at the moment. David, good to have you on our program. Oh, thanks for having me. We didn't hear it in that soundbite, but there has been a bit of a change of tone in the last couple of days from the president talking about how some of the objections to the bill echo the failures of

the past rather than hopes for the future. It sounds like he's getting impatient. I don't know

so much he's getting impatient. He's trying to ratchet up the pressure. He's been very statesman-like,

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